don't even think about trying to use a coupon

This weekend I had a really unpleasant shopping experience. And it didn’t even happen at Wal-mart. In fact, I usually try to stay away from naming people or places when the experiences are bad to be nice. But I’m not going to do that – the bad experience was at Stage in Elk City. Stage. On Main Street, next to Terry’s Furniture.

And here it is:

Bryan’s birthday is this week. He’s hard to buy for. Whenever I ask him what he wants he tells me “nothing.” It’s very helpful. So I decided that I would go and look for some cologne for him. The problem is that I had no idea what I wanted. So I went to the one place in town I could think of that sells cologne – Stage, with Wyatt in tow.

When I walked into the store, it was dead quiet – crickets chirping quiet. There were an abundance of employees standing around but no other customers that I could see. It was a perfect set up. I put Wyatt down next to me in his little car seat and told the lady that I needed some cologne for my husband but I wasn’t sure what I wanted so I might need to smell a few.

I’m not sure if someone put pee in her coffee or maybe she ran over her own puppy on the way to work but that woman was unhappy to have to help me. I was obviously putting a real damper on her day by making her (gasp) work. It was very unfortunate that the first five colognes I tried smelled like my old dentist, my father, a dirty locker room in high school, the trunk of my grandma’s car, and an Avon catalog. But that wasn’t really MY fault, right? I was tempted to just pick one and go but then I thought, “I’m going to have to smell this every day…” Plus, cologne is not cheap. I didn’t want to spend $60 on something that reminded me of getting my teeth drilled – I need cologne that smells like – well…, that makes me want to rip Bryan’s clothes off. And so, despite her constantly rolling her eyes at my questions and sighing LOUDLY when I asked to smell something else, I kept a-smellin’.

I finally found one that didn’t remind me of anything – perfect. The saleswoman then put it on the counter and told me to get in the back of the line to pay for it, as there were now other customers. How kind of her. I waited and waited. Wyatt was on the floor in his carrier and I turned to look at some women’s perfume while I waited. I heard a little girl’s voice say, “Whose baby is that?”

“He’s mine.” I tried to sound cheerful even though I had just dealt with the rudest saleswoman on earth and wasn’t feeling very cheery. The little girl looked me up and down and asked, “Is he your grandbaby?” If her mom hadn’t been right there, I probably would opened a can of whoop-a** on her. I am only 31 years old. I wanted to grab a clearanced Isotoner slipper and beat her with it. But I held off on the idea and politely told her that he was in fact my child, not my grandchild.

In the end, I paid at a different register with yet another disgruntled worker. Why were all of these women so mean? Perhaps they get a special parking spot if they go without smiling for their entire shift. Or maybe if they make a customer cry, they win a longer lunch break. Who knows. But next time I’m in the mood for personal pain, I’ll go there instead of Wal-mart.